4-204 (Raw)

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No Sydney paper which has of late spoken on the subject appears to be thorough on the Chinese question. The Mongolian proclivities of our leading morning journal are notorious and were never more than flimsily disguised; and the newspaper which, while the 'Chinese sailor' dispute was raging from Cape York to Cape Otway, took so active a part in aiding white mariners against coolie labor, appears to regard the present anti-Chinese agitation as ill-timed and unnecessary. Perhaps there would be little said by the white workman against the Chinaman were the latter to confine his operations to vegetable-growing and potato-peeling, for these occupations are comparatively unremunerative and employ so limited a number of persons that a guarantee would, by the natural laws of trade, be afforded against the supply of Chinamen being out of proportion to the demand for vegetables. However, the present agitation results from the fact that the white man sees Chinamen erecting buildings in the main streets of Sydney and perceives that the Mongolian, who has long been a cabinetmaker, has now commenced practice as a carpenter. The action taken by those who promoted Monday night's meeting at the Temperance Hall is not the less commendable because the speakers and the audience were for the most part men who had personally felt or were afraid that they would soon feel the effects of the Chinese invasion - a dearth of work and a reduction in the rate of wages. [394] The workman may yet be a philanthropist and a sound political-economist, but he has not yet learned to regard questions of this kind except from the standpoint of self-interest. The Chinese question is a weighty one and one on which hundreds of pages have been written, and will in the future be written; but the conclusion which inevitably and inexorably forces itself on every reasonable white who, whether as employer or workman, practically studies the question is that where the white man and the yellow stand side by side under the same laws, the former must, if he is to exist, sink to the level of the latter. On the Chinese question there must be no compromise on the part of the people of this country. All the sophistry in the world will not remove these facts - that the Chinaman, while living under the protection of our laws and enjoying every privilege accorded to the white, contributes hardly anything to the revenue; that the indirect taxes he does pay are imposts levied on the consumption of opium, and on other vicious habits; that he invariably removes his realised wealth from the country, which as a set-off only gets his cheap labour - the ruin of the white; that the Chinese bring no women with them, and foster immorality wherever they settle: that the races should not be allowed to mix; that they are mixing to an appreciable extent in the lowest quarters of the large cities; and that the presence of the Chinaman must ever be a disturbing element in the at all times sufficiently strained relations between capital and labour. The Chinese as a body must eventually be cleared out of all but tropical Australia, and it will be well for the community to settle the business as soon as possible, by imposing on every Mongolian who lands on our shores a poll-tax so heavy as to prohibit the Celestial workman from competing with the white. The Government which, in imitation of the English practice, goes so far as to protect the ordinary professional man from the competition of the professional civil servant - whose status here is, unfortunately for him, utterly different from that of his English prototype - should surely take a lesson from the experience of the United States, and protect the white man against the inferior race which under present conditions must in time supplant him. [395] This we say not merely as theorists. The writer has 'humped his swag' through North Queensland, the Celestial's paradise, and seen how, in spite of the advantages given to white men by the mining regulations, hundreds of whites were deprived of work in order that thousands of Chinese might fossick for a living. At present the Chinese, who, properly speaking, are not morally, physically, or intellectually fit to sit down in the same continent with the European, are living amongst us as a favored race. They enjoy all the Caucasian's privileges - labor under none of his disabilities. They will, if allowed, yet starve him out. According to the HERALD they are splendid colonists. We know the Chinaman better than most people. He produces two things - vice and vegetables.
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